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Abstract
We welcome the lead article (Rose, Citation) and congratulate Miranda Rose for raising important issues for the utility of gesture and pantomime in the rehabilitation of people with aphasia. We take this opportunity to briefly discuss recent theoretical developments and experimental research in the cognitive neurosciences on the relationships between language and action. We comment briefly on some issues raised in the review, including the question of how it is that some people with aphasia are able to utilise gesture and others are not, the relationship between propositional and spontaneous gesture and the degree to which treatment utilising gesture is possible at all for people with severe limb apraxia. Research based on experimental and theoretical developments forms the promising basis for further investigations into the utility of gesture as a facilitator for language in aphasia. We wonder, however, if it is those most in need of gesture and pantomime to compensate for severe impairment who are the least likely to benefit from labour-intensive treatment.